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Comment by mrob | Hacker News Reader

100% agreed. 24fps is far too low for fast motion. People in the industry talk about "art" to justify their low frame-rate, but I don't believe them for a moment. 24fps lets film-makers get away with sloppy technique that would be exposed if we could actually see moving things clearly. 24fps is cost-cutting.

TV makers are just trying their best to improve things under the constraint of bad quality source material. Motion smoothing isn't perfect, but I'm not convinced it's worse than the alternative.

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As a former animator, let me tell you that cost-cutting tricks are insanely important parts of the process. Hell, it’s a part of any process - there is a balance to be found between making a thing “perfect” and making it in a sane amount of time. Very few projects have infinite deadlines and budgets.

24 is good enough to produce a caricature of reality, with slightly different rules that are much easier to bend. That’s pretty damn useful for storytellers.

It's just peculiar that all the director's named in that article and almost everyone I know who thinks in any depth about this issue disagrees with you.

It's conceivable I might "get used to it" but that's like telling someone who hates cilantro that that will "get used to it". They don't want to and neither do I.

It's not peculiar in the slightest when, as Upton Sinclair famously put it, "it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." The industry is under increasing financial pressure (e.g. see https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/why-hollywood-as-we-... ), so why increase costs when customers are still buying 24fps material?

So you're saying the listed film directors have some vested interest in 24fps? And all the film lovers are just following their lead?

I don't buy it.

How on earth would increasing the frame rate increase costs? It's all (mostly) shot on digital media, so there's no extra film costs like in the pre-digital era. Storage costs are trivial for digital media. It wouldn't increase the time for setting up shots, and probably wouldn't cost extra in postprod.

Brighter lighting required. Scenes become impossible to shoot with natural light. Props and sets need more detail. Unless the actors are very good, more takes are needed to get the acting right. More work needed on continuity, and more reshoots because a mistake is obvious. More VFX render time (and more manual work in some cases, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20600107 ).

And storage costs are not trivial. Assuming a modest 10:1 shooting ratio, 8K resolution, 120fps, and 36bit color (12 bits per channel), that's 1.29PB of raw data for a 2 hour movie. Some genres (notably documentaries) have much higher shooting ratio.

1. Most scenes are lit with extra lights. It's extremely rare to shoot with just natural light. 2. Prop and set detail has nothing to do with FPS, but with final image resolution. 3. Actors are always good. They're pros. You'd be amazed at how good. Regardless, the FPS has no bearing on the amount of retakes due to talent performance. 4. FPS has nothing to do with continuity. Either the script supervisor catches the error, or it's noticed in post and corrected then. 5. Storage costs are trivial compared to most production costs. Above the line costs dwarf storage.

Directors are artists. They pretty much always prefer the old inferior way because it is more arty. C.f. film vs. digital.

You say "arty" like it's a bad thing. How peculiar.

It is in this context. Directors like 24 FPS because it is more arty than 60 FPS, but really it is strictly inferior. Even if you prefer a lower frame rate for weird aesthetic reasons, just shoot at a high frame rate and then cut every other frame so people can choose.

It's like, nobody thinks 1080p is better than 4k. Or that 8 bit dynamic range is better than 10 bit. So why do some directors think that 24 FPS is better than 60? Art. Right.

Course they do. If 1080p is all you need, the extra cost of 4k is pure waste. Bigger numbers do not mean better.

4k is definitely better than 1080p, unless you have pretty bad eyesight and no glasses.

It's interesting that you, of all things, chose cilantro for your simile, when there are indications that dislike for cilantro is actually primarily genetic[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriander#Taste_and_smell

Cilantro. The worst! In 24fps or otherwise.

> that’s like telling someone who hates cilantro that that will “get used to it”. They don’t want to and neither do I.

This is an important point, and has more to do with the debate than whether or not 24 vs 60 is actually better. Many people don’t care if 60 is better and don’t want to hear the argument.

I expect that TV manufacturers aren’t intentionally trying to change anyone’s mind, but rather are looking at the future generations of viewers. Kids don’t seem to mind HFR as much, and kids outnumber adults who prefer 24fps. Today’s kids are tomorrow’s TV buyers.

A good answer might be to appease today’s vocal film lovers by adding settings or changing defaults, but they might also reasonably choose to cater to the preferences of the next generation over the current one.

>100% agreed. 24fps is far too low for fast motion. People in the industry talk about "art" to justify their low frame-rate, but I don't believe them for a moment.

Yeah, armchair critics know more than artists and movie industry professionals...

And 100 million + movie budgets have "sloppy technique" to hide with "low" 24 fps frame rates, whereas your imaginary movies will have good technique to justify higher fps.

(In fact directors shoot with different shutter speeds to get the artistic motion capture they like to have -- from regular real-life like motion blur at 180 degree shutter, to fine motion for action scenes. The frame rate is not the determining factor here).

Not to mention that beside the unrealistic "I'm on cocaine" look, higher frame rates mean dimmer images and more noise -- but it's not like people wanting "higher" understand those things, they just know "higher is always better", and they get their understanding from video games...

The first time I watched 60fps film was over 20 years ago, when I saw a short Showscan movie at Futuroscope in Poitiers, France. I hadn't even heard the phrase "frame rate" back then. But I immediately knew that Showscan looked amazingly better than anything I'd seen before. It was the first film I'd seen that looked anywhere close to realistic, and nothing else at Futuroscope could compare. I watched it again because I liked it so much.

I think motion smoothing is on by default because people like it, not because TV manufacturers are idiots.

Yes, it could be that people are tacky.

After all most movies watched (especially today) are crap.

Showscan and other high frame rate formats are indeed great for simulating reality. That’s why sports is mentioned in the article. If you’re building a flight simulator, sure go and use 120fps.

But cinema at anything higher than 24, looses its sense of Impressionism. 24 is not the way we see the world in our normal life, and that’s just the point. Look at an impressionistic painting. It just isn’t what we see in our normal life, and again that’s just the point. It’s flaws are the point. It’s what makes Impressionism its own medium vs realism. Movies in 24 are simply Impressionism. Yes it was an accident 100 years ago but it worked.

Tokyo Story consistently places at or near the top when directors or critics are polled for best film. It's a superb film IMO, and it's not impressionistic at all. Actors look directly at the camera, which is static and positioned to make it seem like you're actually sitting there with them. You care about the characters because it feels so immersive. The realistic style works despite the low frame rate because there's so little motion.

What other great artistic achievements are we missing because the film industry refused to move past impressionism?

I agree that we should move past 24fps. Panning shots judder to my eyes in a very unpleasant way, even if not panning particularly quickly. It's not just action shots that suffer at the low frame rate. If people hate it because they're used to 24fps, well, then they'll get used to a new standard soon enough.

60 fps is probably not that important for most movies and tv shows though, but it's a bit annoying to watch music videos at 24 fps.

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